Friday, October 15, 2010

Coons, Combines, and Construction

Thought I'd give an update out on what's been happening in our little world. Let's just say that there's plenty happening.

First, harvest took place this last week in the soybean field in back of our house. Every other year they switch between corn and soybeans. Even numbered years are soybeans and odd numbered years are corn. I always enjoy watching the combine work the fields. The kids thought it was really cool for the first few years, but now I think they basically just humor me and come out and watch because my excitement scares them.

Here's the combine starting to come through the field. T-bird has his Stutzman's Ethiopia Adoption shirt on!

The combine gets right up against our backyard and swingset. It's very impressive (at least to me it is).

Here's the amazing Eddie Joe....always looking for a camera to smile for!

Once the combine went by and cleaned the field, the leftover wild pumpkins were revealed. Each year after Halloween we through our leftover pumpkins out in our mulch pile. The next spring they grow and spread out into the farmer's field. We then have more pumpkins to carve when fall comes and then throw back in the mulch pile when we're done with them. Kind of a cool cycle. That's T-bird and The Big Fella in the picture above.

How's the house coming, you ask? Well, all of the upstairs is sheetrocked, textured, and primed. The sheetrock on the basement rooms just finished today. Taping and texturing will start in the basement tomorrow. We have had to make about a thousand decisions on everything little detail over the last couple of weeks.

What kind of decisions????

Where exactly will the dining room table sit? (Exact placement needed for determining location of light above the future table and extent of wood flooring for the dining area.)

What color of paint?

What do those colors look like when they're painted on the walls?

What color of carpet?

What type of vinyl flooring for the basement bathroom?

What type of lighting?

It just goes on and on and on and on. The addition has certainly filled up our "free time."

Another interesting thing that's been going on? There's been three baby racoons in the backyard this last week. They probably got dislodged when the field was harvested. Anyway our neighbor was concerned because she runs a daycare and together we decided that we should take some action. Heather called the Sheriff and the Sheriff's office dispatched their finest.

After surveying "the situation," the Sheriff told us we had two options. He could either trap them.........or shoot them. His vote was obviously for the latter. In an effort to protect the little ones in the neighborhood from rogue baby racoons, he felt the best choice was to open fire in our backyard with his, more than likely, rarely used sidearm. His fingers were likely tingling with the potential delight of feeling the magical recoil of the revolver - relishing the thought of it unleashing a hollow point through the hide of an extremely villainous creature.

Well, needless to say, we opted for the trap. So, in his disappointment, he set a trap in our backyard and left the scene. We figured it wouldn't be long until we had some trapped coons. (We also knew what the likely fate of the trapped coons would be when the Sheriff's office's finest came back to "relocate" the trapped perpetrators. His tingling fingers would happily whisk away the full trap quickly placing it in the trunk of the squad car for a hastily arranged training session outside of city limits.)

So, later that evening, Heather went out at around 10:00 pm to see if anything was out there. As she began to walk out in the yard, she shined her flashlight in the direction of the trap. She could faintly see two eyes looking back at her from the trap. She inched forward, cautiously trying to make out the details of the creature in the trap. As she continued to close in on the trap, she realized the trapped critter was light in color. Inching even closer she tried to make out the details, not sure if the creature was about to somehow rip open the trap and pounce upon her. To her amazement, she finally recognized what was in the trap. It was our dog, Cody (aka, Dingleberry). Cody (aka, Dingleberry) had smelled the bowl of tuna in the trap and couldn't contain himself. So there he sat in the trap, whimpering, but satisfied from the good meal. We wrestled him out of there and decided to leave the trap unset. We knew Cody (aka, Dingleberry) would likely climb right back in and we didn't want the Sheriff's office's finest to "relocate" him.

Well today, Cody (aka, Dingleberry) was barking loudly at one of our apple trees. It's not completely unusual for him to bark at nothing, but his behavior seemed even strange for him. I was out watering our newly seeded grass, which is doing quite well I might add, and decided to go take a look. Up in the tree I spotted what looked like a cat at first. But then noticed not one, not two, but three baby racoons up in the tree. Throughout the day we then watched them and spotted them not only in the apple tree, but in the Linden tree, and then scampering out along the edge of the bean field. I got some great pics of the coons. They were fun for us all to watch. Heather wants to adopt these newly orphaned cuties, but I'm certain that we would meet the same fate as Will Ferrell did in "Elf" when he tried to give a racoon a hug.

Tomorrow's activities? A wedding to go to, Sunshine's marching band competition, the Huskers play Texas, and I get ready to travel to Donaldsonville, Louisiana for the week. Another busy day! Hope you have a great weekend.

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About us

We are a family of eight - two girls and four boys - living in Northeast Nebraska. On 11/8/09, our church participated in National Orphan Sunday (organized nationally by the Christian Alliance for Orphans). It was on that morning that God stirred our hearts to adoption and orphan care. We have recently completed the process of adopting a 4.5 year old girl from Ethiopia through our Agency All God's Children International (AGCI).
We are blogging our adoption for two purposes: to journal what God has done in our lives through this adoption, and to spread a vision of orphan care by providing information of ways everyone can be involved.